The metropolis of this land of sunshine, fruits and flowers, fifteen
miles back from the sea, is _La Puebla de la Nuestra Senora la Reina
de Los Angeles_, or "the City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels;" a
lengthy title which the matter-of-fact Americans some time ago happily
shortened into Los Angeles. From it Los Angeles River flows south to
the sea at San Pedro Bay. The Spaniards founded the town in 1781, but
it had only a sleepy existence until 1880, when the railways came
along, and it became a centre of the pleasure and health-resorts, and
the extensive fruit growing of Southern California, expanding so
rapidly that it has seventy thousand people. Originally, the houses
were of adobé, but now it has many fine buildings and a magnificent
development of residences, the whole city being embowered in luxuriant
vegetation. In the neighborhood are petroleum wells and asphalt
deposits, while the adjacent district has many irrigation canals. Down
on the ocean shore is San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, where the
harbor has been improved by a large outlay, and twenty miles away is
the beautiful mountainous island of Santa Catalina, a popular resort,
which is in reality an ocean mountain top. Santa Monica Bay, to the
southwest, is the coast bathing-place of Los Angeles, and near by is
the popular Redondo Beach, with its spacious Chautauqua Assembly
Building. Pasadena is a charming suburb of the city off to the
northeast, a perpetual garden and favorite place of residence. It is
in San Gabriel Valley, over which rises the great Sierra Madre Range,
eleven thousand feet high, the glossy green orange groves on its sides
gradually melting into the white snow-capped summits of this towering
mountain wall. A railway ascends Echo Mountain north of Pasadena, on
which is the Lowe Observatory. To the southeast is the old San Gabriel
Mission in the valley, surrounded by vineyards and orchards.
San Buenaventura was another Mission, and is now a health-resort at
the coast outlet of Ventura valley, and beyond is Santa Barbara, the
"American Mentone," one of the most charming California resorts. The
old Spanish Mission, with its towers and corridors, is famous, and was
built in 1786, being well-preserved and having a few of the Franciscan
monks yet in charge. A curiosity of the neighborhood is _La Parra
Grande_, the "Great Vine," having a trunk four feet in diameter and
covering a trellis sixty feet square, its annual product being eight
thousand pounds of grapes. Farther along the coast is the charming Bay
of Monterey, with the Spanish town of Monterey on its southern shore.
In 1770 the Mission of San Carlo de Monterey was founded here, and it
was the Mexican capital of California until the American conquest in
1846, then depending chiefly on a trade in tallow and hides. It has
not grown much since, however, and the old adobé buildings have not
undergone change in a half-century. It is now a popular resort, having
the noted Hotel Del Monte, the "Hotel of the Forest," located in
spacious and exquisite grounds, the park embracing seven thousand
acres. Upon the northern side of Monterey Bay is Santa Cruz, its chief
town, also a summer-resort, having a background made by the Santa Cruz
Mountains. This was a Mission founded in 1791, and five miles
northward is the Santa Cruz grove of big trees, containing a score of
redwoods or sequoias, of a diameter of ten feet or more, the largest
being twenty-three feet. Within a hollow in one of these trees General
Fremont encamped for several days in 1847. To the northward is the
prolific fruit region, the Santa Clara Valley, where Mission Santa
Clara was founded in 1777. The city of this valley is San José, with
twenty thousand people, distantly surrounded by mountains, and, like
all these places, a popular resort. The Calaveras Mountains are to the
eastward, and here, on Mount Hamilton, twenty-six miles southeast, is
the Lick Observatory, at forty-two hundred feet elevation. It was
founded by a legacy of $700,000 left by James Lick, of San Francisco,
and is attached to the University of California, being among the
leading observatories of the world. It has one of the largest and most
powerful refracting telescopes in existence, the object-glass being
thirty-six inches in diameter. Mr. Lick is buried in the foundation
pier of this great telescope which he erected. There is a magnificent
view from the Observatory, which is exceptionally well located, its
white buildings, shining in the sunlight, seen from afar.
Across the Coast Range of mountains, eastward from San José, is the
extensive San Joaquin Valley, noted as the "granary of California,"
two hundred miles long and thirty to seventy miles wide between the
mountain ranges. It produces almost limitless crops of grain, fruits
and wines. Through this great valley the San Joaquin River flows
northward, and the Sacramento River southward in another valley as
spacious, and uniting, they go out westward to San Francisco Bay. We
are told that in the days when the earth was forming, the sea waves
beat against the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, but ultimately the
waters receded, leaving the floor of this vast valley of central
California stretching nearly five hundred miles between the mountain
ranges. The first comers among the white men dug gold out of its
soils, but now they also get an enormous revenue from the prolific
crops. Railways traverse it in all directions. The chief city is
Stockton, at the head of navigation on the San Joaquin, a town of
twenty thousand people, having numerous factories. Here in the slopes
and gulches of the Sierras, stretching far away, were the first
gold-mines of California, when the discoveries of the "Forty-niners"
set the world agog. Here, at Jackson, was tapped the famous "Mother
Lode," the most continuous and richest of the three gold belts
extending along the slope of the Sierras, and so-called by the early
miners because they regarded it as the parent source of all the gold
found in the placers. This lode is in some parts a mile wide, and
extends a hundred miles, being here a series of parallel fissures
filled with gold-bearing quartz-veins, while farther south they unite
in a single enormous fissure. The mineral belts paralleling it on both
sides are rich in copper and gold. The country all about is a mining
region with prolific "diggings" everywhere, and smokes arising from
the stamp-mills at work reducing the ores. Here are Tuttletown and
Jackass Hill, the home of "Truthful James," and the localities made
familiar by Bret Harte and Mark Twain. Here is Carson Hill, there
having been picked up on its summit the largest gold-nugget ever found
in California, worth $47,000. What this gold-mining has meant is shown
by the results, aggregating since California first produced the metal
a total of nearly $1,350,000,000 gold given the world. As the San
Joaquin Valley is ascended, it develops its wealth of grain-fields,
orchards and vineyards, and displays the grand systems of irrigation
which have contributed to produce so much fertility.
Eastward from San Joaquin Valley are the famous groves of Big Trees,
the gigantic sequoias, which Emerson has appropriately called the
"Plantations of God." There are two forests of giants in Calaveras and
Mariposa Counties displaying these enormous trees, of which it is
significantly said that some were growing when Christ was upon the
earth. The Calaveras Grove, the northernmost, is at an elevation of
forty-seven hundred feet above the sea, upon a tract about two-thirds
of a mile long and two hundred feet wide, there being a hundred large
trees and many smaller. The tallest tree standing is the "Keystone
State," three hundred and twenty-five feet high and forty-five feet in
circumference. The "Mother of the Forest," denuded of its bark, is
three hundred and fifteen feet high and sixty-one feet girth, while
the "Father of the Forest," the biggest of all, is prostrate, and
measures one hundred and twelve feet in circumference. There are two
trees three hundred feet high, and many exceeding two hundred and
fifty feet, the bark sometimes being a foot and a half thick. This
grove, however, being less convenient, is not so much visited as the
Mariposa Grove to the southward. It is in Mariposa (the butterfly)
County, at sixty-five hundred feet elevation, and near the Yosemite
Valley. The tract of four square miles is a State Park, there being
two distinct forests a half-mile apart. The lower grove has a hundred
fine trees, the largest being the "Grizzly Giant," of ninety-four feet
circumference and thirty-one feet diameter, the main limb, at two
hundred feet elevation, being over six feet in diameter. The upper
grove contains three hundred and sixty trees, and the road between the
groves is tunnelled directly through one of them, which is
twenty-seven feet in diameter. Through this living tree, named
"Wawona," the stage-coach drives in a passage nearly ten feet wide.
These trees are not so high as in Calaveras Grove, but they are
usually of larger girth. The tallest is two hundred and seventy-two
feet, ten exceed two hundred and fifty feet, and three are over ninety
feet in circumference, while twenty are over sixty feet. Many of the
finest have been marred by fires. There are eight groves of these Big
Trees in California, these being the chief.